In the US, much of the complaint coming from religious people about being religious is that “we” (in the US) tend to “compartmentalize” our religion. As if that’s a bad thing. Look at the Middle East for an excellent example of non-compartmentalized religion. Do you actually think the US would do a better job?(If you do, share your thoughts in the comments section.) (more…)
Recently a Facebook friend lamented about his privacy having been breeched in an area he deemed “none of your business”. To me, the fact that he announced it on Facebook was ironic. Moreover, he, whether he intended to or not, probably moved a few of his friends to take a moment to find out what all the fuss was about. After all, what’s five minutes if you know where and how to look?
Not smart. Not smart at all.
Which leads me to ask, what is private? Not much, but this is not a recent occurrence. Our privacy has been diminishing since the 1930s and now it’s easier than ever to find out most anything you’d like about someone; particularly the stuff you would prefer not be found out.
If you are interested in a house, you can find out whatever you’d like, including all the owners, major improvements (that have been legally done), and how much it is worth. You can also find out about foreclosures, sheriff sales, and whether someone was killed or died badly in the home. It’s all part of disclosure and most, if not all is free for the asking (or googling).
If you want to hire someone, or even if you are merely curious, you can find out if someone tends to break the law, whether they pay their bills, or if their resume is accurate. That information is also mostly free, or available for a small fee.
So how do you keep that information from prying eyes? Newsflash! The commoner has never been able to do that. It’s nearly impossible to do it now.
For example, recently I had someone, who fancied himself a troll, trying to engage me on Twitter in a discussion he obviously had no experiential knowledge about. His was a philosophy based on his own world view, which didn’t necessarily line up with the facts and reality of the situation. I pointed that out to him. So he tried to wow me with his credentials, which (unfortunately for him) were overstated. How did I find that out? I googled him and found his profile on Linked In. I had just enough information to be able to find him in under 5 minutes. Another five and I could have run a poor man’s background check. Scary? Heck yes. Nevertheless I stopped him dead in his tracks and hope he learned something like: It’s really a bad idea to lie about your credentials when you are going to seminary. UPDATE: This person truly is a creep. I’ve blocked him on Twitter and he tries to leave a comment here about how he doesn’t do Twitter often and that I didn’t stop him. Duh. Try not doing it at all. The world will get along just fine.
Back to my Facebook friend with the privacy issues. It will do no good to suggest to him that the best way to protect one’s privacy is to have nothing in one’s past that has gotten one arrested or sued. It’s too late for that. However, the next best thing is to avoid arousing curiosity. It’s also a bit late for that. But the real kicker in the whole thing is that he’s blaming someone for nosing in what he thinks is his business alone; business which exposes him as a liar and a hypocrite when compared to his stated values. Having that bit of background adds a certain context into everything he says.You can almost see the stories he tells himself to avoid the cognitive dissonance. For me, it just adds an entertainment factor to everything he says.
If you’ve read the headlines this week, a clear pattern of federal government behavior by elected officials, appointed cronies and career employees has emerged that can be grouped into three categories: Liars, Priers, and Deniers. (more…)
My honey called me after he finished playing at church to go to our Saturday eat out place; Taco Bell. So I get ready and we head over there. It’s 90 out at 6:30, so I’m dressed lightly. I ask David where he wants to sit and he points to a table that we sit at often, because it’s warm. Other than a backpack and bag piled in a chair, the spot seems deserted. I look around, there’s no one ordering a meal and for all I know it belongs to the person at the next table, but they don’t say anything about someone already sitting there, so we sit down. They don’t take the bags when they leave. That’s when I assume someone has left the bags. About a half hour later, right before we get ready to leave, someone orders food and sits down at the table next to us where the other couple had been. He looks at me, but generally seems disinterested until I get up and start to take the bags over to the ordering counter, because I think someone might miss them and I would want someone to turn them in if I had left something. So the guy asks me what I’m doing with the bags. I tell him I’m taking them to the ordering counter as they appear to have been left behind. He says they belong to him and starts getting pretty loud saying that I should have known that someone was trying to save the table. Perhaps that’s true, but it doesn’t even occur to me that someone would leave their stuff at a table and leave the room – unless they were forgetting the stuff. People normally don’t leave their belongings unattended in public places.
Generally speaking, I’m pretty aware of my surroundings, and he wasn’t in the dining area when we came in. I didn’t notice him until he was ordering at the counter – older guy, hard life, doing the biker look.
I was irritated because all I was trying to do was do the right thing. I have no idea whether those bags belonged to him, but I stifled what I really wanted to say, set them down, filled my drink back up, and left as my husband said, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
I bought my HP zd8000 laptop back in August 2005 after my old laptop started misbehaving. This zd8000 has been a pretty good laptop, other than a heat problem and the lint problem I wrote about earlier – well except for the battery. I’m now on my 4th battery and it looks like I’m going to be heading to “batteries R us” and getting yet another replacement. Yesterday my laptop suddenly switched off and the battery hasn’t charged since, nor does the computer think there’s one in it.
This is more than a bit annoying. Right now, the only way I can type this article is by removing the battery. Otherwise, the keyboard is unresponsive. Not a big deal unless I actually want to type something like my password. The other problem is that the AC adapter has a weird connection into the computer that works its way loose. So there’s always the “will the laptop become unplugged and switch off without warning” dilemma. That’s always fun – not!! The only good thing about the battery being gone is the fact that the temperature on the wrist rest becomes about 20° cooler.
The heat problems are not trivial. I used to use the laptop on my lap. I rested the laptop on my legs until my legs became so discolored that I couldn’t wear shorts. I think my legs were being cooked by the laptop. I finally bought a chiller and put the whole thing on a lap desk. I got one big enough to allow me to add a mouse because the right button on the touchpad got kind of funky about a year ago, so rather than respond with a touch, it requires more of a massage to do right mouse things. Replacing the touchpad is a major overhaul and it’s not a part you can get from HP. You have to find one from a cannibalized system.
I guess since the laptop is 3 years old, it’s lived its useful life. It has become a friend. It saw me through school. I’ve added memory, a larger hard drive, and the 3 batteries. It has been to Egypt and Israel. Overall, it’s been a a decent machine, but it’s time for a new one.
For years I have been at the top of the rankings in the Google search engines using the keyword “Amy Stinson”. Well, that all changed when I made a changed to the rewrite engine, which ironically is supposed to help SEO, to a more “search engine friendly” format. I dropped to #11. Now I’m going to have to figure out how to claw my way back to the top.
Bummer, man.